The nationwide “Modi Wave” swept forest-rich Chhattisgarh too, where the BJP continued its dominance despite the Congress putting up a neck-to-neck fight in four of the 11 seats before losing three of them.
Former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi and Union minister Charandas Mahant, who initiated the gold dig at Unnao, may be among the prominent losers from the Congress, though they took the fight down to the wires. Till the time of filing the report, they were trailing by a slender margin from Mahasamund and Korba, respectively.
The lone Congress winner appeared to be the low-profile Tamradhwaj Sahu, likely to wrest the Durg constituency capitalising on the sizeable Sahu vote bank and unpopularity of BJP's sitting MP Saroj Pandey.
In the two previous Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had won 10 seats whereas the Congress had bagged only Mahasamund in 2004 and Korba in 2009. The trend is likely to continue this time, as the saffron party has already won three seats—Bastar, Kanker and Raigarh—and leading in another seven.
Chief Minister Raman Singh's son Abhishek Singh is almost sure to win from Rajnandgaon by a comfortable margin, while senior BJP leader Ramesh Bais is set to retain his Raipur seat. Overcoming the drubbing at the Assembly polls, the BJP also emerged victorious in Maoist-affected Bastar.
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